The Right Attitude to Rain

AT T I T U D E T O R A I N

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She did not enjoy cocktail parties, unless she was in the very special mood that made them bearable or unless she was the hostess, in which case she could busy herself with duties and would never get stuck. Getting stuck was the problem, thought Isabel. You could not talk to the same people for the whole evening, but how did one get away? Saying “I must let you circulate” was the same as saying “Would you please move on,” and saying “I must circulate” was the equivalent of saying “I must move on; you stay here.” In an extreme situation, one might say,

“I think I’m going to faint,” which would immediately bring about suggestions that one sit down—elsewhere. That enabled movement, but the excuse had to be used sparingly. One could acquire a reputation for fainting too frequently.

“You get invited to cocktail parties in hell,” a friend of Isabel’s had once observed. “There’s one every evening. But I gather there’s nothing to drink. And you have to go.” He frowned and looked regretful. “I’m not looking forward to it,” he went on.

“Not one little bit!”

Isabel had asked him about how he dealt with the problem of being trapped, and he had thought for a moment before he gave his reply.

“You can mention your infectious diseases,” he said. “That sometimes gets people moving. The other possibility is to say: ‘Let’s talk about religion. Let’s really talk about it.’ That works too.”

But this was not a cocktail party. West Grange House, a Georgian house behind walls, stood in the middle of a large garden that had been transformed for the occasion. Long trestle tables, covered with white linen cloths, had been set up beneath the two large oak trees that stood mid-lawn. Along these tables were wooden chairs, at least forty of them, and 1 4 4

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h places were laid before each: white napkins, glasses, silver. Near the large, sunken rockery, a table had been set up for the bar; next to it was a large tin bath in which stood a big lump of ice, like an ice sculpture awaiting its sculptor, with bottles nestling round its base.

Isabel liked this house. She liked the air of quietness, the feeling of being away from the fray, which, she thought, is exactly what a house should provide. She liked the feeling, too, that things were planned here; that what happened in this house happened because it was meant to. And this party, she thought, which had been decided upon only two or three days before, looked as if it were the result of weeks of preparation.

Joe and Mimi were introduced to Peter and Susie and taken off to meet somebody. Isabel, a glass of wine in her hand, walked out onto the lawn, nodding to one or two friends in the clusters of guests. It was a clear, warm evening, in spite of Isabel’s foreboding that the Scottish weather would misbehave; perhaps this was global warming, the creeping of Mediterranean conditions northwards, the migration of species into northern zones; hammerhead sharks in the Irish Sea—that was a thought—scorpions in the villages of England. But we had been warned, she reminded herself, that global warming would bring Scotland only more rain and less sun.

She looked heavenwards, and felt dizzied, as she always did when she looked up into an empty sky; the eye looked for something, some finite point to alight upon, and saw nothing. It might make one dizzy, she told herself, but it might make one humble too. Our human pretensions, our sense that we were what mattered: all of this was put in its proper place by simply looking up at the sky and realizing how very tiny and insignificant we were. Our biggest cities, our most elaborate sympho-T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N

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nies, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the smartest gadgets, were nothing really, just a momentary arrangement of the tiny number of atoms we had in our minuscule patch of space. Nothing.

“A monkey puzzle tree.”

Isabel turned round. Mimi, a glass of what looked like champagne in her hand, had come up behind her.

“Yes,” said Isabel, glancing at the tree at the far end of the garden. “They used to be very popular. The Victorians loved them and put them everywhere.”

“You’re so lucky with your soil,” said Mimi. “You have this lovely rich soil. My garden in Dallas is clay. And it gets so dry.”

It sounded to Isabel as if Mimi were reproaching herself.

“You can’t help your soil,” Isabel said. “Nor your weather.”

Mimi looked at a clump of rhododendrons in flower along one of the garden walls, the blossoms pink and red against the dark green of the leaves. “Our soil is our fault—to an extent.

Remember the dust bowl. Dust storms and tumbleweed? That was human greed. And we repeat that sort of mistake, don’t we?

Look at Las Vegas, if you can bear to. That’s in the desert, we should remind ourselves. We’ve built that dreadful disaster in the desert, of all places.”

“I suppose somebody likes Las Vegas,” said Isabel.

Mimi was silent. There was a bird somewhere in the undergrowth, hopping about, making the leaves rustle.

“I’m sorry about the other day,” Mimi said suddenly. “I’m not sure if I should have told you what I told you. About your mother.”

Isabel continued to stare at the point where the bird had been. “I’m glad that you did. And I asked you to. If you had refused I would have felt that you were hiding something from me. And we have to know these things . . .”

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“Do we?” asked Mimi.

“Once we suspect them.”